The argument I made is not so much whether a cream of the crap ftp and sprint can coexist in a rider. That is extremely rare, but depends. I am not a believer at this occurring cleanly at the pro tour level.
Rather, the point concerns what this particular rider has been said to do this year. WvA has stated himself that lowering his glycolytic capacity to further boost the ftp (or repeatability at threshold, whatever) for the classics has been a goal of his this season. In other words, ”weaken” his anaerobic side of power production. The training data from the summer corroborates he actually did stuff that’s expected to produce the desired effect, ie a heavy block of climbing. One cannot really say ”but there is a cost” because the stated goal was already to weaken something.
Sprinters do not do stuff like that so as to not lose their absolute short effort glycolytic capacity and ultimately speed. Yet for WVA there seems to be no very obvious trade off between the two poles of the said system, ie sustaining a high fraction of vo2max and short efforts. He still sprints very well and tts very well.
So perhaps the focus on the anaerobic side of things is too narrow. Suppose he managed to keep his aerobic / anaerobic balance roughly where it was before, but increased the amount of oxygen available per unit of time. That could lift all boats, as it were, except perhaps the fraction of vo2 sustainable for a long time. But this will vary individually and with a higher vo2max it might be worthwhile anyway.
Now what might make more oxygen available?
Rather, the point concerns what this particular rider has been said to do this year. WvA has stated himself that lowering his glycolytic capacity to further boost the ftp (or repeatability at threshold, whatever) for the classics has been a goal of his this season. In other words, ”weaken” his anaerobic side of power production. The training data from the summer corroborates he actually did stuff that’s expected to produce the desired effect, ie a heavy block of climbing. One cannot really say ”but there is a cost” because the stated goal was already to weaken something.
Sprinters do not do stuff like that so as to not lose their absolute short effort glycolytic capacity and ultimately speed. Yet for WVA there seems to be no very obvious trade off between the two poles of the said system, ie sustaining a high fraction of vo2max and short efforts. He still sprints very well and tts very well.
So perhaps the focus on the anaerobic side of things is too narrow. Suppose he managed to keep his aerobic / anaerobic balance roughly where it was before, but increased the amount of oxygen available per unit of time. That could lift all boats, as it were, except perhaps the fraction of vo2 sustainable for a long time. But this will vary individually and with a higher vo2max it might be worthwhile anyway.
Now what might make more oxygen available?